Why Circuit Training is the Best Workout

There is so much confusion about the best way to train to lose weight and maintain overall health and fitness. Some people tell you that you do not need to perform cardio and they use anecdotal evidence or results based on extremely small non-statistical samples to try to sell you their “top secret” to losing weight.

Others take the opposite approach and try to get you to perform high intensity intervals be touting all the extra calories you will burn. The problem with these claims is that they use the calories burned by an extremely fit individual who during the same workout could easily burn more than twice the calories of someone just starting out. Then there is the “afterburn” effect which often fails to recognize that just as many or more calories could be burned with non-exercise activity thermogenesis.

When all this is added up it can make the decision of how to exercise so confusing that you may not even start. While neither of these approaches is ideal for most individuals looking to go obese to healthy or that want to improve or maintain overall health and fitness, there are some things from these approaches that we can apply to a workout program to get great results with a minimal time commitment.

Why You Should Include Resistance Training

Resistance training whether it be with weights, bodyweight, or weighted bodyweight has three major benefits.

First, whichever rep range you focus on you will develop strength and add muscle mass, the main difference will be which one is emphasized. By adding lean muscle mass while improving your strength, you will both increase the number of calories that your body can burn at rest and improve your quality of life as you age.

Second, resistance training stimulates osteocytes to breakdown and rebuild bone which leads to stronger bones. This again helps to increase your quality of life while you age by leading to fewer by guarding against some of the common injuries people often experience.

Finally, resistance training increases angiogenesis to the muscles. This means that it increases the number of capillaries supplying nutrients to the muscles. This results in in better muscular endurance by allowing better exchange of oxygen and metabolites. It may also lower the effects of a cardiac event by providing alternate routes if a blockage occurs.

While the benefits of resistance training are great, resistance training alone does not comprise a well-rounded workout program. Let’s look at three areas that resistance training does not adequately address.

First, traditional resistance training does not burn a lot of calories compared to cardiovascular training. Although this is relevant to everyone, it becomes even more important to consider as a beginner or someone who has not yet developed a lot of muscle mass, strength, or muscular endurance. The implications of less mass, strength, and endurance are that less muscle requires less energy as does less force and a lack of muscle endurance may mean that fewer quality repetitions can be performed.

Second, resistance training can lead to improvements in cardiovascular health in someone who would otherwise be sedentary, but it will not lead to significant gains when compared to cardiovascular training. This is largely because during resistance training, we take long rests between sets and completion of a set can easily take less than a minute. Although, I have heard some people try to equate this the schematic of HIIT cardio, the difference is that during that set most individuals are not going to giving it a near one-hundred percent effort through the entire set.

Finally, beginners may find resistance training boring at first because of the slow pace as compared to an all-out cardiovascular workout. This may lead some who start with pure resistance training type workouts to stop before they start to make any significant gains in fitness or health. It may also lead people to try exercises that they are not technically ready for due to a lack of experience and muscle memory, which may lead to an increased risk or injury, or even less progress than if they had stuck with a more basic workout plan.

Why You Should Include Aerobic Training

Aerobic (or cardio) training whether it be low intensity, moderate intensity, or HIIT has three major benefits.

First, whichever form of aerobic exercise you decide to do you will generally burn a higher number of calories when compared to traditional resistance training. This is because you will keep a higher heart rate and have more overall activity during the cardio sessions. One caveat is that if you want to burn the most calories and be able to recover more quickly it is best to stick with low to moderate intensity cardio. These types of cardio can be performed for a longer period that leads to a greater amount of calorie burn. While many preach the benefits of HIIT (and there are some great benefits) it is harder to recover from and due to the intensity workouts tend to be shorter.

Second, as you progress in your aerobic tolerance you will notice easier breathing, lower heart rate, and better endurance. Aerobic workouts are great for increasing lung capacity the efficiency with which our respiratory system functions. Together these lead to an improvement in how long we can maintain a high level of effort and dramatically improve overall health.

Finally, aerobic training can be used to improve mobility and agility which in turn make other activities easier and more enjoyable. Our muscles, ligaments, and tendons adapt to our usual range of motion. So, if we rarely move in a full range of motion our overall mobility and agility can become decreased as our body adapts to shorter ranges of motion. This can lead thinking they are “stiff” or having difficulty doing certain activities that require are larger range of motion. But this can be reversed by performing exercises in which we move in a full range of motion. The more we move the more our body adapts. Aerobic exercise is great as encouraging a full range of motion and warming up our muscles, ligaments, and tendons so that they can stretch and adapt.

While the benefits of aerobic training are obvious, aerobic training alone does not comprise a well-rounded workout program. Let’s look at three areas that aerobic training does not adequately address.

First, people that are very overweight or obese might find that they cannot perform exercises at an intensity high enough to elicit substantial benefits. Often either limitations in mobility or the risk of injury can require exercise adaptations that are less effective. While these individuals will gain some benefits, they will likely be less than envisioned. This could cause such individuals to either quit or push themselves beyond their body’s abilities leading to injury.

Second, aerobic training is not going to lead to significant gains in muscle mass or strength in most cases. Standard aerobic training is designed for one purpose to get the heart pumping and keep it pumping. The burn calories while you force your respiratory and cardiovascular systems to adapt and increase endurance. While some types of cardio may result in building a small amount of muscle, it is not what they are designed for and the results are much less than that of resistance training.

Finally, aerobic training alone does not have the same benefits on the musculoskeletal system and aging as resistance training. Aerobic training does not provide enough intermittent force to stimulate the osteocyte response that traditional resistance training is able to elicit. Also many forms of aerobic training do not help the body to adapt to moving a load. This means that though an individual performing aerobic training may improve their range of motion and agility, they do not provide as much injury prevention as performing loaded movements which increase strength and teach the body to better support itself.

Why Circuit Training is the Answer

If you are short on time and want to make dramatic improvements to your fitness and health a combination of resistance training and aerobic training, otherwise known as circuit training, is the answer. Circuit training has numerous advantages when compared to resistance training or aerobic training alone.

In circuit training you get all the advantages of both resistance training cardiovascular training. By completing sets of bodyweight and weighted exercises without resting between each exercise you gain the cardiovascular and respiratory benefits of an aerobic workout. Also, by eliminating rests you tax the muscles more. This alleviates the boredom some new weightlifters might experience and means those newer lifters will need to use lighter weights — allowing them to focus on proper form. Finally, by using a mix of both bodyweight exercises and resistance exercises we are limiting the amount of stress on the joints meaning that the circuit can be performed without alterations that will make a workout less effective if you happen to be obese.

You are probably wondering what one of these circuits looks like. Generally, we are going to want to take advantage of as much equipment as we can to minimize any downtime caused by changing weights. This means that I like to use the barbell, a couple sets of dumbbells, and a pulley machine. But it is completely possible to use just one set of dumbbells and get an effective workout by varying the repetition ranges for each exercise rather than the weight.

Generally, having a circuit of 5 to 7 exercises is ideal. When we move from one exercise to the next we want to try to work either an opposing muscle group, or a muscle group that we did not work in the previous exercise. Also, primarily compound movements are best because by using these multi-joint exercises we can work more muscles and burn more calories while keeping our workout short.

Here is an example circuit:

Cable Seated Row 12–15 reps

Bodyweight Squats 15–20 reps

Dumbbell Overhead Press 12–15 reps

Dumbbell Neutral Grip Deadlift 15–20 reps

Moderate Speed Mountain Climbers 10 each side

Rest 60–180 seconds

In this circuit we used moderately high reps for upper body exercises and high reps for lower body exercises because we are assuming the individual is new to training and has a goal of improving overall health while losing weight. It is best to start newer people off with lower weight and the higher reps help them to get used to the exercises while also working more metabolically and building endurance. We also suggested a rest time of one to three minutes. As we are able to get through the workout more easily we could steady decrease the rest time.

An option for individuals trying to focus on power or strength is to break the circuit up into two or three supersets, depending on the number of exercises. The first one or two exercises can be explosive low rep exercises. From there you can plan the rest of the workout in the hypertrophy and endurance ranges. This is a personal favorite style of workout when I want to work my whole body and don’t have extra time to do standalone aerobic training.

Wrapping it up

I am a fan of circuits because I can get full body workout in a shorter amount of time than traditional styles of training. While circuit training is a compromise in resistance training because it does not specialize in hypertrophy, power, or strength like a traditional resistance workout can I think most of us are willing to live this disadvantage when we take into account all of the benefits. If you do not have the time to dedicate to separate resistance training and aerobic training sessions, but you want to improve your health, fitness, and physique I recommend trying circuit training.

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